On Sun, 10 Sep 2006, Bryan Atinsky wrote:
> Funny thing, in Israel a bageleh is more or less a pretzel...often with salt.
I was going to bring that up. That's what's so funny about this original discussion being posed as if bagels and pizza were traditional things that were handed down pristine and perfect and shouldn't be messed with.
Bagels and pizza are two wonderful things that were invented in America at the same time we were inventing Jewish-Americans and Italian-Americans. New York pizza is as foreign to Italy as New York bagels are to Israel. So modification of the bagel is actually a return to its original tradition, which is re-invention. Just like modification of the frankfurter is (of which you can't get a "real" one in Frankfurt either. Although boy do they have other stuff that is the wurst. And if you want a real shock of cultural transform recognition, go to Nuremberg and ask for a Nuremberger.)
And of course the same is true of Chinese food, the other example. Chinese food in New York isn't the same as in China. And it isn't the same as in Paris, where they serve it in courses, with wine, and with salad and cheese afterwards.
The fascinating thing in America is how not only the food but the mores were invented. It's considered bad manners, selfishness and uninitiatedness, to order one dish and keep it to yourself instead of agreeing to a share in common dishes. We have to share. That's not the norm for any other kind of restaurant and it's not the norm for them, except for a feast. It's not us imposing our model or adopting theirs. It's a new resultant of confluence.
And similarly, our use of chopsticks. Have you ever seen a Chinese person use chopsticks to eat a rice dish? It's not a delicate picking instrument. We made this up. Or rather we transposed it from elsewhere -- from Japanese manners, which we picked up in the occupation.
And most delicious of all, we use them in Thai restaurants -- where Thais never would. They were a colony of the French -- they grew up using utensils. To them, using chopsticks to eat Thai food is like using chopsticks to eat a Big Mac. Except on noodle soups -- which is the one dish we don't use them for.
In sum, hybridity is absolutely the norm for all American ethnic food, and all ethnic food anywhere else. And for that matter, for all ethnicity, which can be defined as a group located away from its original location and crossing the cultures of its origin and destination to create a new identity.
So there is no authentic ethnic beginning. The beginning was invention. It was crossing traditions to make something new that preserved something old in a form that suited us better. You might thus say that even the first invention was reinvention.
So you can't measure anything by closeness to an origin that doesn't exist. The only real measure is whether the reinvention is any way an improvement. Which in the case of ethnic food, means whether it tastes better to us -- or at least interestingly different -- and/or whether it's more readily available (two qualities that are often inversely proportional, but also often stimulate each other).
Let a thousand bagels bloom. And thank god other ethnicities are willing to willing to wake up at 3am and to handroll and kettle bagels now that there aren't enough working class Jews to keep that invented tradition alive. If they are the master bagellers now, it's their show.
Michael